Near the start of the academic year, a friend and I were approached about teaching some software to undergraduates. The undergraduate tutors were wanting there to be a series of sessions to teach core software which is useful for studying and practising architecture. I was keen to take this opportunity, to gain some experience in teaching and pass on some of the skills which I have acquired over the course of my university studies. Of the different programs that they were looking to run sessions on, I chose to tutor in the desktop publishing program of Adobe InDesign.
InDesign is software that I began using in the second year of my undergraduate degree, and now in MArch studies it is something that I use virtually every day. When I began using it, I didn't receive any training in it, so have picked it up just through using it, and turning to the occasional online tutorial or forum for specific help where required.
The tutorials were to be two hours long, aimed at complete beginners. I started planning the lessons by just sitting down and scrolling through all of different toolbars, tools and menus, and making a list of the priorities of which I deemed to be the most essential skills and actions for a beginner to know to be able to start using it to lay out an architecture school portfolio and presentation sheets.
The Adobe InDesign interface
I have now taught two of the sessions and have one more to teach next week. I am really enjoying the experience, and feel that I have managed to do a good job of giving complete beginners a head-start in using the program, getting them to a level where they can start using it and gradually pick up more skills as they go along.
Doing this has shown me that teaching is something that can be enjoyable for me, and I would definitely take up the opportunity to do more of this in the future, in this program or other ones which I feel confident with.
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